Environmental Change, Development Challenges – Revisited

The establishment of the IDS Environment Group in 1990 created a line of research linked to policy that has remained central to the Institute ever since. In highlighting a series of IDS Bulletin issues, led by IDS researchers, this archive issue tracks the development of this work over the last 35 years. It also tells a broader story of the contribution of IDS to key debates on environment and development evolving over this time. During these decades environmental challenges have become ever more acute, with environmental questions being absolutely central to Development and Development Studies in a world of multiple intersecting crises.

So, what then have been the core contributions of this body of work emerging from IDS and partners over the past decades? Some of the themes highlighted by the IDS Bulletins featured here include: key contributions tracking debates over the relationships between environment, development and policy in the early 1990s; the emerging emphases on social dimensions, communities, resources and livelihoods, including work linking environmental research with long-standing gender research at IDS; the politics of environmental knowledge, exploring local knowledges and perspectives and the ways these challenge mainstream science and policy; and uncertain knowledges and the development of the ‘pathways approach’ to sustainability, bringing together understandings of complex, dynamic systems.

Over the years all this has combined with analyses of power and political economy, highlighting of questions of justice, both around the causes and consequences of environmental change and the processes of transformation towards more sustainable futures. All of these themes remain relevant to critical policy-oriented research on environment and development emerging from IDS and beyond that we hope will continue to shape global debates on these most crucial issues of our time.

Reimagining Social Protection

Social protection features in numerous country policies and development agency strategies, as well as in several Sustainable Development Goals. However, following more than two decades of considerable expansion in policies, programmes, and research, the sector finds itself at a crossroads. Social protection is currently positioned in a global setting characterised by a range of emerging and intensifying challenges and uncertainties, including post-Covid-19 pandemic recovery; the cost-of-living crisis; unprecedented climate change; and rising numbers of protracted wars and political instability, leading to mass displacement and migration.

Drawing key insights and lessons from an international conference on ‘Reimagining Social Protection in a Time of Global Uncertainty’, hosted by the Institute of Development Studies in September 2023, the articles in this issue of the IDS Bulletin reflect on the role social protection plays in a shifting, uncertain, and volatile global context.

In particular, the articles focus on three broad themes that are increasingly defining the trajectory of social protection policy, programming, and research: the politics of social protection policy processes; social protection in crisis settings; and inclusive and innovative social protection.

Social protection is firmly on the agenda in most low- and middle-income countries. The articles in this collection argue for the need to reimagine the scope and ambition of social protection in light of multiple threats. The challenge that remains for social protection advocates is to support governments and civil society actors to move towards nationally chosen and locally appropriate holistic social protection systems, via more inclusive and responsive programming.

Understanding Gender Backlash: Southern Perspectives

Far from seeing continued steady progress on gender equality, we are currently witnessing significant backlash against gender and sexual rights. Limited and hard-fought gains for some are being reversed, co-opted, and dismantled – all amplified through new social media and digital technologies.

This issue of the IDS Bulletin addresses the urgent question of how we can better understand the recent swell of anti-gender backlash. Perspectives from Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Uganda, and the UK detail examples of anti-gender backlash in different contexts, and the actors, interests, and tactics involved.

The articles here present critical perspectives for framing and interpreting a global phenomenon not yet well understood. The IDS Bulletin starts by grouping the issues discussed into three themes: voice and tactics; framings and direction; and temporality and structure. The authors explore the features of the recent and current wave of backlash that include increased authoritarianism, religious resurgence, populist hyper-nationalism, and the concurrence of misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia. Along the way the articles also point to connections with parallel debates in development, contributing to nudging this topic out of the ‘gender and development corner’.

The set of complementary viewpoints on the framing and theorising of backlash presented in this issue is also intended to contribute to scholarship by attending to an increasingly recognised gap in research. By presenting new ways of analysing and countering backlash from more diverse settings, this issue of the IDS Bulletin calls for the development of better strategies and tactics for resistance and reclaiming gender justice.